


Keeps No Record of Wrong

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Series: The Pacemakers [16]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Anxiety, Awkward Conversations, Bribery, Bullying, Character Bashing, Clique Mentality, Eavesdropping, Epic Friendship, Eventual Happy Ending, Explanations, False Accusations, Gang Bash, Gossip, Grumpy Cliffjumper, Insults, Invasion of Privacy, Isolation, Light Angst, Loyalty, Mid-Canon, Misunderstandings, Multi, Pace Mates, Pack Dynamics, Post-Mission, Protectiveness, Rants, Recklessness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-04
Packaged: 2018-04-30 00:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5144351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Bumblebee, why would you want to associate with him?”</p><p>“Wha—who?” </p><p>“He’s not exactly the best person to correlate with if you value your reputation. Not very many Autobots on this ship appreciate what he does to them.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeps No Record of Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Pace - A company or herd of mules; in my headcanon, a family of Minibots; also a traditional expectation and an honor among Minibots who form one.
> 
> One - the first Minibot to agree to join the proposer's pace
> 
> Culumexian - the form of Cybertronian spoken by residents of Culumex, the Minibot city on Cybertron, or the residents themselves

“Thanks for the cube, Smokescreen,” Bumblebee said cheerfully as he left the energon stockroom, glancing at the table where the Minibots usually sat. To his surprise, the only occupant of the table was Cliffjumper. The scout briefly wondered where the others were; most of them had said they were going to need refueling after the latest fight with the Decepticons, yet none of them were in sight.

Shrugging it off, he started to head in Cliff’s direction, only to be stopped by a summons from Sideswipe: “Bee, you coming to us?”

Bumblebee paused, glancing at his fellow Mini, who looked up with shadowed optics and shrugged noncommittally, which was basically Cliffjumper-speak for ‘Go ahead, I don’t care’. Bumblebee nodded and changed his course, climbing onto the circular bench and settling himself between the Twins and Blaster.

“Nice to see you out of the communications hub,” he greeted, cracking open his medium-grade.

Blaster grinned, leaning back as though against a wall though he had his back to the open room. “Yeah, well, even a music meister needs a time for tuning.”

Bumblebee simply smiled as though he understood whatever Blaster was trying to say, but before he could begin puzzling it out, Tracks leaned toward him, setting an arm on the table by his energon cube.

“Bumblebee, why would you want to associate with him?”

“Wha—who, Blaster?” Bumblebee stammered, glancing at the communications officer in surprise.

Tracks huffed, tilting his helm in exasperation. “No, of course not. I’m talking about your frame-double over there.”

Bumblebee knew from the way Tracks’ optics shifted that he meant Cliffjumper. “Why would I want to associate with him?” he echoed slowly. “How about because he’s a pace-mate?”

“Ah, so you feel an obligation to him,” Tracks mused.

Eyebrows hunkering down, Bumblebee agreed warily, “Yes…?”

Nodding curtly as though satisfied, Tracks glanced around at the other larger Bots, declaring, “I thought so.”

Bumblebee’s internal warnings started going off; he had a feeling he’d inadvertently said something condemning. “And he’s a friend. What d’you mean, ‘you thought so’?”

“He’s not exactly the _best_ person to correlate with if you value your reputation,” Tracks explained. “Not very many Autobots on this ship appreciate what he does to them.”

“What does he do to them?” Bumblebee asked incredulously. He knew Cliffjumper had a temper, of course, but that was how most Culumexians were by instinct; besides, Cliff had been burned a few too many times by so-called ‘friends’ back on Cybertron to blindly befriend everyone.

Tracks scoffed rather rudely. “Well, for starters, did you see him in battle today? I took to the air to bring down Dirge and what does Cliffjumper do? He leaps onto a boulder down below, pulls a rocket launcher out of subspace and opens fire! He didn’t even check to see if I was out of range; he could have hit me!”

Bumblebee blinked a few times and then struggled toward an apologetic smile. “Well, he—sure, he acts on the spur of the moment, but that’s our way: do it cos no one says you can’t.”

The scowl on the corvette’s face deepened but Grapple answered for him with a snap to his voice, “I’ve said many times that he can’t!” At Bumblebee’s perplexed expression, he clarified, “Move my materials. That was this morning, _before_ the battle where he nearly killed Tracks. When I told him to stop rearranging my things, he had the gall to tell me that _I_ had prepared them in the wrong order!”

“What if you had?” Bumblebee protested.

Grapple bristled, retorting, “I didn’t! I fixed the order of the material, but I’m sure he did something to sabotage them because now the device I built with the materials is malfunctioning!”

Bumblebee winced, partly in anticipation, as he expected the Twins to chime in, but when he peeked over at them they were simply smirking, pleased that someone other than them had grievances against the red Porsche. Only a little relieved, he looked to Blaster for senior-officer-help.

“I’m not the best person to ask right now, Bee,” Blaster informed him reluctantly. “A certain topic of conversation was chewing me out after the dance with the Cons, telling me I didn’t pass the message for backup along fast enough.”

“Well, you didn’t!” Cliffjumper snarled, reminding everyone of his presence. Bumblebee looked over his shoulder, his example followed by the others, to find the other Minibot standing on the bench encircling the other table so he was at optic height with the larger Bots.

“CJ—” Bee started, only to be cut off by Cliffjumper’s sharp gesture in Grapple’s direction.

“You _were_ doing it wrong! It’s no wonder your device’s malfunctioning if you didn’t do what I told you! And you, Tracks, if a certain comm. officer had thought to warn you, maybe you wouldn’t’ve been so worried about your useless frame. I didn’t see you doing much to Dirge, by the way. Until Blaster gets his act together, maybe you should find your own fraggin’ airspace to flap around in so at least _one_ of us can do some damage!”

Bumblebee swallowed apprehensively as his fellow Minibot stormed out of the rec room, hurling his mostly-empty energon cube at the wall as he went. It shattered, spraying fragments of cybre-glass across the floor, but Cliffjumper didn’t even turn his helm.

“Thanks a lot,” Bumblebee addressed the others, frowning as the doors slid closed. “There’s going to be repercussions for that. You better scatter; when CJ’s unhappy, it makes the rest of the pace unhappy.” With that he gulped down his own cube and rose, gingerly avoiding the glass splinters as he went.

The next day, Cliffjumper was still in a foul mood; he hadn’t said a word to affirm it, but Bumblebee could see it in the tightness around his optics and mouth. In fact, Brawn had taken one look at Cliff and his entire bearing had changed from typical _happy-we-didn’t-get-slagged-in-the-night_ Brawn to _the-morning’s-still-young-for-slagging_ Brawn.

“Who’s got you running hot this time, Cliffjumper?” their pace-leader had asked sharply.

Cliff seemed to mistake the vexation in Brawn’s EM field for being aimed at him, as he’d answered in the same tone, “No one!” and had shoved past the others out of their berthroom.

It wasn’t as if Bumblebee didn’t understand Brawn’s job—to protect his mates. Bee himself had participated in putting some of Brawn’s plans into action. However, this particular ordeal was centered on Cliffjumper, who was easily the most volatile of their group and he knew that if the rest of the pace got involved, it would only make a bad situation get worse. Therefore, when Brawn gave him a questioning look, Bumblebee just shook his helm.

“Trust me,” he pleaded, “you don’t wanna know.” He held up a hand before Brawn could protest, stating flatly, “You’re wearing _the look_. And you all…” He waved with the same hand at the other Minibots around them. “…you’ve got it too.”

“What look?” Gears scoffed, folding his arms against his lower chassis.

“That,” Bumblebee pointed out the motion. “You’re remembering when the Twins got you running hot by thrashing you and you had to get your armor replaced. I’ll bet anything you’re hoping it’s them so we can thrash them again!”

“Is it?” Windcharger asked in a rather dangerous voice.

“For once, no,” Bee assured them. “Listen, if I get you all your energon cubes, will you let it go?”

“Bribery? It’s _got_ to be bad!” Huffer burst out.

“I’ll be right back,” the scout groaned, hurrying out the door and hoping none of them would follow him. Fortunately no one did.

Warily entering the busy rec room, Bumblebee glanced at the corner to find the broken glass of the energon cube had been swept away. The sight pleased him; perhaps if the others simply let go of what had happened, Cliffjumper might too. He was not as pleased, however, to see the same group of mechs, minus Blaster, sitting together, leaning in and speaking in hushed, hard voices.

Bumblebee sighed, certain that the problem would continue until at least one of the sides apologized. Trying to push the trouble out of his mind, he headed for the storage room, scooping up the cubes he had come for. The open stockroom was close to the right corner table, where the others were seated, so he and Smokescreen could hear the conversation. It wasn’t anything surprising to Bee:

“‘Get my own airspace’, indeed! Does he think I can control where the Decepticons fly?!”

“It’s not _enough_ control which is the problem, Tracks. If he’d had the decency to speak first and interfere later, you wouldn’t have had your life endangered and I wouldn’t be stuck with a malfunctioning mechanism!”

“Just a nanoklik, Bumblebee,” Smokescreen stayed him before he could emerge from the stockroom. The Praxian strode out ahead of him and Bumblebee relaxed slightly. Smokescreen was a charmer; surely he could soothe their grievances.

“I know exactly what you mean.”

Bumblebee nearly dropped the energon cubes.

“Prime called on me to make a screen around Megatron,” Smokescreen continued. “But Cliffjumper wasn’t watching where he was aiming and nearly blasted me with his glass gas! He ought to take better care than that.”

“Who ought to?” Bumblebee was aghast to see Wheeljack and Perceptor perk up at a table on the opposite wall.

“Cliffjumper,” Grapple spat, raising his voice. “He ruined my latest invention!”

“We know the feeling,” Wheeljack sympathized, optics scrunching up as they did when he was scowling. “One time he came in and set full, open energon cubes on top of our data pads!”

“When the energon inevitably spilled, a day and a half’s worth of data was lost!” Perceptor lamented.

“The nerve!” Grapple cried, full of indignation for his fellow scientists.

“That’s nothing,” Sideswipe scoffed. “He once told my bro and I that all we have to rely on in battle is dumb luck, no skill! You guys all know we’re better than that!”

“That was Cliffjumper? He’s one to talk!” Much to Bumblebee’s horror, Ironhide was striding toward the table from across the room. “I remember the time he nearly took Prime’s helm off because he thought a rock formation was a Decepticon! How could he not know the difference o’ that?”

“What do you think, cousin?” Smokescreen prompted. Bumblebee didn’t have to wonder which of Smokescreen’s two cousins it was, as Bluestreak immediately rattled off:

“Well, I’m just remembering the time Trailbreaker told me about, when Cliffjumper lived up to his name—seriously, he literally jumped off a cliff because he thought an Earth bird was Laserbeak. Earth birds look nothing like Laserbeak; I’ve seen Earth birds on this nature show Prowl showed me once—it’s on a channel I can’t remember, but I think he taped the show, so I could pull it up sometime if you want—”

“The point is,” Tracks cut in, “he doesn’t pay any attention to his surroundings! He’s reckless and irresponsible and that puts the rest of us in danger!”

“We’re just doing our jobs,” Wheeljack agreed, nodding forcefully, his audial strobes flashing a darker color than usual. “He’s over the top.”

“And he’s not so tough either!” Sunstreaker agreed disdainfully. “From what you’re all describing, it sounds like he’s jumped off one cliff too many! He doesn’t even know an Earth bird from Laserbeak and we’re trusting him to help us in the field! How do we know he’s not shooting at us on purpose? We know he hates us all!”

“Are you sayin’ he’s a traitor?” Ironhide demanded in astonishment.

“Well, the way he went after Mirage that one time could’ve just been an act,” Sunstreaker pointed out. “Throw the suspicion off the target of his bright red back—”

“Enough!” Bumblebee hollered, stalking out of the storeroom and setting the cubes off to the side, though he did briefly consider throwing them at the larger Bots. Once his hands were free, he placed them on his hips, glaring at all of them and letting loose.

“Grapple, Tracks, you’ve made your point: you’re annoyed with him, we get it, okay?! There’s no reason to go getting everyone riled up out of spite! But I’ll tell you the reasons why _not_ to.” Assured by the silence that he had everyone’s attention, the scout went on.

“Grapple, you apparently need a reminder that our pace-leader and his One are engineers! Our whole pace has learned from them for centuries, so maybe Cliff had something to offer you! Tracks, he wasn’t ‘stealing your show’ by taking out Dirge; until you complained, he didn’t even give you grief about it! Why can’t you just be grateful to him?

“And you two—” He whirled toward Wheeljack and Perceptor. “He was bringing those energon cubes for you, on Ratchet’s orders! He knew the only way you’d drink them is if he put them where you’d see them—so yeah, maybe he shouldn’t have used your data pads as coasters, but it was an _accident!_ You were the ones who bumped the table and spilled them anyway!

“Smokescreen, his glass gas is a delicate thing! It takes a lot of calculation and he would’ve only used it if he had actually done the calculating! I doubt he would have hit you, so stop exaggerating! Bluestreak, there’s no reason to play Unicron’s advocate if the situation doesn’t even _involve_ you! Let Trailbreaker come and tell his own story to my face if he dares! And since when do you join in bashing someone just because your cousin does? I don’t think your brother would be happy to hear that. And Ironhide…”

Bumblebee toned his voice down a single notch due to the weapon specialist’s higher rank. “What if it _had_ been a Decepticon? You’re supposed to be Prime’s bodyguard, right? If it was a Con, he would’ve seen it before you. He took initiative because he wanted to protect you and Optimus from an enemy. Because he’s loyal. To a _fault!_ ” His vocals shot up again as he looked angrily to the Lambos. “He and Mirage already made amends for what happened between them and the only reason Cliff went after him so hard is because he himself is an Autobot to the core. How dare you imply otherwise!”

Meeting each pair of optics in turn, the scout threw his hands up. “So all I’m hearing are the times he’s done you a favor, tried to protect you, or looked out for the best interests of our cause! I know he’s oh-so-hard to live with, I know he can be headstrong and prideful and impatient, I know he can be an outright jerk—but frankly, sitting over here in the corner gossiping like lower-caste femmes, _so can all of you!_ ”

Without waiting for anyone to think up a response, Bumblebee bent down and scooped up the pace’s energon cubes, juggling them in his arms. As he strode past the group, one of the cubes slipped from the load and he tensed, waiting for it to hit the ground.

Instead it landed in the center of Wheeljack’s palm and he handed it back with a murmured, “Here you go.”

Nodding curt thanks, Bumblebee went on his way out of the rec room and back down the hall, deep in thought and thus oblivious to the red Minibot who stood in the shadow of the doorframe, a small, rare smile on his face as he mulled over what he had heard.


End file.
